Renault in meetings; Dave Richards in waiting
December 3, 2009 by SJ Skid
Filed under People & Events, Top Story
Executives from Renault are meeting in Paris today — which from my vantage point sounds exotic and lovely, but for them is probably like meeting in Newark or Kansas City, Kan. — to discuss the company’s F1 future, and lurking everywhere are rumors that Dave Richards and Prodrive could purchase the team.
Autosport is on top of this one:
Renault has been evaluating its future plans since the end of the season, and sources suggest that one of the routes being most seriously considered now is for the team to be sold to Richards’ Prodrive operation.
Prodrive has long held F1 ambitions, having come close a few years ago to running customer McLaren-Mercedes cars. Richards was unavailable for comment about the matter on Thursday.
However, a Prodrive spokesman said: “We cannot comment on the Renault situation, but it is well known that our intention is to get back into F1. We proved our credentials earlier this year when we had a strong business case for an entry, but having had an engine deal with Mercedes-Benz in place we were not willing to sacrifice our competitiveness.”
Should the executive board made a decision about selling the team to Prodrive, then it will still need to be ratified by the Renault’s main company board – which is scheduled to meet next week.
Despite the uncertainty over the future, Renault has been continuing to work hard on its preparations for 2010 – and recently undertook a technical staff reshuffle to firm up its operations for next year.
That last paragraph seemingly gives Renault fans hope, but as we’ve seen this year — with Toyota mainly — work can keep going and then the rug gets pulled out. Or perhaps interested buyers want that work to be continuing.
Other sources, however, are taking this story further: French sports paper, L’Equipe, this morning published news that Renault will sell its chassis making operation, effectively withdrawing from the series, but that it will continue provide Renault engines to that team and to Red Bull.
This can be found at the New York Times blog, which is reporting the above.
It also reports that Richards will be the buyer, and apparently those sources are pretty solid.
It does sound like we’ll know, at the latest, about Renault’s future next week — if word doesn’t leak before then.
Have we discussed the idea of Prodrive and Dave Richards joining F1? Of the potential teams out there, do you think Prodrive is the best suited to come in and perform well?
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The French papers are all over Renault and F1 – many of the shareholders’ groups are saying F1 does not “represent marketing value for shareholders.” When you have a board meeting in France, everything is up for grabs. It all comes down to where Renault have been taking the cash to support the F1 team: Marketing, not R&D (like Toyota). And if marketing doesn’t need or have a driver worth the media exposure to sell cars, then poof! F1 Renault will be sold off, quickly. The other part of the equation is that Loeb said he’s not interested driving F1 Renault next year. Now that may have been the death knell since the other Frenchie, what-his-name-who-cares-he-can’t-drive-anyway, has proved useless on camera, in the car and, importantly, with sponsors (ie selling their product).